The following is a speech given by Rep. Frank Wolf on the House floor Friday, June 12, 2009 on the MADAM SPEAKER, As ranking member on the Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations subcommittee, which last week considered the FY 2010 appropriations bill, I have a keen interest in and oversight responsibility for a host of counterterrorism-related initiatives. The bill, which is expected to come before the full House next week, includes $7.7 billion to support the work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), whose top priorities include protecting and defending the United States against terrorism and foreign intelligence threats. The FBI was intimately involved in a 15-year investigation which culminated last fall in the Holy Land Foundation and five of its former organizers being found guilty of illegally funneling more than $12 million to the terrorist group Hamas. A Department of Justice press release issued May 27, 2009, reported that "U.S. District Judge Jorge A. Solis sentenced the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) and five of its leaders following their convictions by a federal jury in November 2008 on charges of providing material support to Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization."

Blackburn, United Kingdom (4/29/2005) - An unprecedented meeting took place today between Foreign Secretary of the UK, Mr. Jack Straw, and His Holiness Shaykh Mohamed Hisham Kabbani, deputy to Shaykh Muhammad Nazim al-Haqqani, world leader of the Naqshbandi Haqqani Sufi Order, which boasts a global membership of over 2 million students.

Almost from the moment he sits down, Shaykh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani goes on a sustained frontal attack on Wahhabism, the strain of Islamic thought that is currently and widely believed to be the ideological well-spring of Islamic extremism.

If Wahhabism had been an object standing right before him, it would have been reduced to pulp by the end of the hour-long interview.

But Shaykh Kabbani will tell you that it is not because he hates the Wahhabis. The chairman of the Islamic Supreme Council of America, a religious organisation based in Washington DC whose mission, among others, is to 'educate government officials on the religion, culture and history of the Muslim world', says he is worried because Wahhabism is like an an octopus.

(The Washington Times, 2004) Earlier this month, five Palestinian brothers were convicted in federal court of conspiring to use their Texas-based computer company to make illegal shipments of high-tech goods to Libya and Syria, two nations the State Department considers sponsors of terrorism. One of the brothers, Ghassan Elashi, the company's vice president of international marketing, was convicted of three counts of conspiracy, one count of money laundering and two counts of making false statements about the shipments. Mr. Elashi, along with two of his brothers, also faces a separate federal trial on charges relating to business dealings with Mousa Abu Marzook, the deputy political leader of the terrorist organization Hamas. Mr. Elashi is also the founding board member of a Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) chapter in Texas, according to the Dallas Morning News. In February 2003, the Muslim Legal Fund held a fund-raiser for the Elashi brothers, hoping to raise $500,000 for their defense. As the Morning News reported then, two of the Fund's board of directors had ties to CAIR.